


A Good Man Goes to War

by madame_faust



Category: The Hobbit (2012), The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Dwarf Culture, Dwarven Politics, Erebor, Fundinson Family Feels, Gen, Pre-Smaug, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-18
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-05 16:51:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/725606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madame_faust/pseuds/madame_faust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An exploration of the character of Balin, son of Fundin through a series of one-shots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I own nothing and am making no profit from this story.
> 
> I've been having a lot of Fundinson Family Feels lately, especially about Balin (I'm always having Feels about Dwalin) and I decided to give his character a little TLC. Title comes from the _Doctor Who_ episode "A Good Man Goes to War." Halldóra is mine, she appears in my other Fundin family story "Word Blindness."

When Balin was forty, his preliminary schooling ended and he was taken to the weapon master for combat training. It was not a day that filled him with unbridled glee, but he made an effort not to let that show. He was the eldest son of Fundin, second-in-command of the King’s Guard (second only to the King Under the Mountain himself) and as such was expected to prove his mettle as a warrior of the first class.

Balin liked war games as much as the next dwarfling, he was good at fighting, but he was _better_ at academics. Words came easily to him, dates, names, language the acquisition of knowledge was, to him, as simple as dipping a cup into a clear mountain stream and drinking down the cool water. Mastery of weapons was a skill all dwarves were expected to acquire, to varying degrees and while he was good enough in bouts against his peers, he did not immediately excel in the way he did with scholarship.

To begin with, he was right-handed, putting him at a disadvantage. Many of their race - including his father - were born ambidextrous and those who were not attempted to become equally comfortable using both limbs for the versatility it gave them in battle. Balin favored his right hand obviously and because so many two-legged creatures did so, it was laughably easy for even a novice warrior to fight and best one whose left hand was so much weaker than their right. All his failings, crutches and impulses were known to his foe before he so much as lifted his sword.

After his first day of training, he returned to his family’s suite of rooms with his backside bruised and arms throbbing with pain; he hadn’t scored a single hit against the weapon master who disarmed him every time he lunged forward to attack or tried to parry the blows. It was to be expected, he was young going up against a trained warrior who’d seen battle and defended himself and his shield-brothers against armies Balin could only _dream_ of, but the humiliation of it still grated him.

“Ba!” he heard his infant brother call from across the room, chubby, grasping fingers reaching for him over their mother’s shoulder.

Despite how tired he was and how sore, Balin took his brother from his mother’s arms as Halldóra smiled at her eldest son and relinquished her younger to him. “Good day?” she asked and Balin just looked at her, mouth twisting into a frown. “Ah,” she nodded, seeing his disappointment with himself in his eyes. “I see.”

In his brother’s arms, Dwalin was oblivious to the exchange. He tilted his head back, dark eyes utterly delighted at seeing his big brother home once again. Bracing himself on Balin’s shoulder, he tilted his head up to nuzzle his own, largely bare cheek against his brother’s soft whiskers. The babe’s soft, warm weight was a comfort to bear after hours hefting axes and swords, only to have them beaten out of his hands in seconds.

Hands larger than his removed the babe and handed him back to his mother, replacing the dwarfling with a wooden sword. His father stood above him, looking at Balin with an expression that was not pleased, but neither was it disapproving. “Come along,” he said and Balin knew his father would have heard all about his miserable performance that day from his brothers-in-arms. “Practice.”

Dwalin let out a cry of dismay, but Halldóra shushed him. “Brother will be home soon enough,” she said, bouncing him slightly in her arms. His father nodded his agreement.

“Aye. Just as soon as we have a bit of time to ourselves. Got some lessons to teach.”

Fundin was an absolute giant of a dwarf, over five feet tall, broad and strong as an iron gate. His head was crowned with long grey braids and his face and arms bore the scars of many battles fought and won. Balin, only half-grown, was very small indeed compared to his father and looked up at him doubtfully, holding the sword before him with both hands, feeling the battle was already over before it was begun.

“Don’t look so sour at me,” Fundin remarked, a smile hidden behind his beard. “If you go into a fight expecting you’ll lose it, you surely will.” Drawing his own practice sword, he brought it down, aiming for his son’s heart. “It’s not a matter of size, laddie. Every living thing, from the smallest spider to the largest fire-drake has a weakness.”

“Spiders and dragons are hardly the same thing,” Balin observed, parrying his father’s first blow. Fundin fought slowly and at half speed for his son’s benefit. He would not show such leniency in future years. “A spider can be swatted or stepped on and done away with instantly.”

“Aye, _if_ you know it’s there,” Fundin agreed. “But it can sink its fangs into you and drip its poison in your blood fast as blinking. A dragon might blow fire or ice, but it can have its head cut off or its heart pierced same as any creature.”

He was faring only slightly better against his father than he was against his weapon master - and only because Fundin was speaking to him and moving slowly. It was only a few short seconds later that his sword was knocked from his hands and his father’s dull blade was poised to rip his guts out. With a sigh of resignation, Balin got up and retrieved his weapon, his hands dampening with nerves and exhaustion, making his grip on the hilt slippery.

“There are more ways to kill a spider than there are to kill a dragon,” he remarked glumly, positioning himself for another blow and raising his sword expectantly.

“Only takes one,” his father replied sagely. “It’s for you - ‘specially you, you’ve got brains, m’boy - to find out their weakness. Remember it’s there and you’ll find it if you look close enough. Keep your eyes open and use your strengths.”

“I don’t feel very strong,” Balin confided, then surprised himself by parrying a blow to his left side as swiftly and easily as copying a poem onto a scroll.

Fundin chuckled, “Perhaps not, but you _are_ , my lad. Got more skill in you than you know, just got to be less timid in showing it off.”

The next day, Balin approached his weapon master with no more confidence, but with a more discerning eye. The first five bouts they fought, he was disarmed easily again and again, but he took the chance to watch his legwork. Their race were short-legged and short-armed compared to their trunks, so they moved in a very distinct way as they fought, to maximize their reach and and strength. The weapon master moved differently than his father, favoring his right leg - possibly the result of an old injury, though Balin had no way of knowing that for sure.

When he took up his sword again, he decided to try something new. Rather than simply wait for the blows to rain down upon him, expecting to be parried easily if he struck first, he took advantage of his shorter stature to feint to the left, sneaking the blade of his sword down and around the master’s right knee. The older dwarf toppled to the ground with a look of great surprise that gave way to the first smile Balin had seen on his face.

“Good lad,” he said approvingly, rising to his feet. “Your Adad told you about my leg, did he?”

“No,” Balin shook his head with a small, proud smile. “Just told me I had to keep my eyes open.” Shifting his weight and raising his sword he politely inquired of his master, "Shall we go again?"


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one doesn't *quite* fit the 'Balin is a badass' mode, it's more like 'Balin has some badass genes and spends time thinking about that.' Regardless, I consider this chapter a vital part of the education of Balin the Badass. Be prepared for Dwarf/Elf cultural tensions and smooth (or not so smooth) political maneuvering. If I named my chapters, this one would be Step Two on the Road to Badassery, or, Balin and his Mother.

When there was a war on, there were no more lessons. His weapon master, his father, the king, the whole of the King’s Guard and all of their able-bodied sons were in the North fighting a band of Orcs encroaching upon a stronghold of the Iron Fists. Balin was far too young to go abroad, but he was also too old to weep and scream for his father as Dwalin had done when he bade them farewell. Balin followed his mother’s example, dry-eyed and solemn as she stretched up on her toes to kiss his father.

Fundin had to bend over a fair bit so their foreheads might touch and his mother whispered a prayer that his axes might never dull nor his strong arms tire. The words were so beautiful even Dwalin stopped his wailing in her arms, though he sniffled and soaked her robes with his tears. “Fight well,” Halldóra smiled faintly, leaning up to kiss him one last time before his father straightened up and left with their army. “Bleed little.”

Dwalin’s cries started up again when his father turned his back on them and greedy little fingers reached out, grasping uselessly for him. Balin merely stood at his mother’s side and watched him go, momentarily jealous of his brother’s youth for he _wanted_ to throw himself on the floor and beat the stones until his hands were bloody if it meant his father would come back, but he knew he’d be left with nothing to show for such a display but torn knuckles and a disappointed mother.

Business went on as usual in Erebor while the menfolk were at war. Balin stayed close to his family’s suite of rooms, reading books of history and literature that he did not have time to devour as he wished when his weapons training went on as usual. He also played with his brother and young cousin Thorin, merry games of chase and hide and seek (which was laughable easy since the two of them _always_ hid together, usually behind an arras with the toes of their boots visible at the gap between the edge of the tapestry and the floor).

At night, without the distraction of play, Dwalin would ask endlessly for their father and he fell asleep to the sound of his mother rocking his younger brother in her arms and singing to him in her high, sweet voice. Halldóra seemed as cheerful and busy as ever, bustling between their rooms, the library, and the council chambers with her usual urgency. Even in the King’s absence, there were many trifling matters of court and trade which required the supervision and quill of Erebor’s premiere scribe and advisor to His Majesty - or Her Majesty, as the case may be, for Queen Sigdís could oversee the Mountain as well as her husband when King Thrór was away at battle.

The first and only time Balin saw any indication that his mother was not as sanguine about his father’s going away as she seemed was when the ravens returned bearing news of the outcome of the conflict in the form of ribbons for the families who were left behind. White for survivors. Red for the wounded. Black for the dead.

Early in the morning, when most of the Mountain was still abed, Balin heard his mother returning to their rooms. Halldóra had a lantern in one hand, burning bright which illuminated her face and the pale ribbon she carried in one hand. Watching her from between the rails of the staircase leading down from their bedrooms, he thought she looked a little different than she had the last few weeks. Lighter. And she exhaled when she shut the door behind her, a long hard sigh, as though she’d been holding her breath ever since his father left and could just now breathe properly again.

Before Balin tip-toed back to bed, he saw his mother hold the ribbon to her lips and kiss it before she tied it around her wrist and tucked it beneath her sleeve, hidden from view. She woke him a few hours later, kissing his forehead and whispering in his ear, “Ada will be home soon, dearie.”

Later, with an impish smile on her face, eyes aglow with happiness, Halldóra approached Balin, perched on a chair in the study with one of her dusty tomes in front of him. “Watch your fingers!” she warned him a scant second before she closed the book on him. “What do you say to making a trip to Dale, hmm?”

Balin’s mouth dropped open and he stared at his mother in surprise. “Really?” he asked. Going into the town beyond the mountain was a very rare treat, since he was so young he had to be accompanied by an adult and his parents, aunts and uncles were nearly always too busy to take him.

“Really,” she affirmed, smiling. “There’s a tailor in town who cuts your father’s coats and he’s in need of a new one. I’ve got the afternoon free, I need to visit the bookseller’s and I thought we might stop by the sweets shop...no idea why, though. I can’t think of anyone I know who likes sweets - ”

“I do! I do!” A head with wild dark hair bobbed up and down below the desk. Dwalin followed his mother into the study and was jumping up and down with his arms raised so she could not miss seeing him.

“You do, you do?” Halldóra asked, her tone and expression all amazement as she picked Dwalin up and settled him on her hip. “Imagine that! Well, then, I suppose we _must_ pay a visit to the sweets shop, mustn’t we?” Turning to Balin she winked, “I hope you won’t mind _too_ terribly much.”

“I think I can bear it,” Balin said seriously before he broke out in a grin. One of the advantages of having a younger brother was that treats Dwalin begged for, Balin equally wanted, but was too mature to voice aloud.

“Oh, what a good brother you are, always sacrificing,” his mother smiled at him fondly. “Go on, get your coat - and _what_ happened to your boots, you little goblin?”

Dwalin suck his lower lip out and wiggled his stocking feet defiantly. “No boots.”

Shaking her head, Halldóra said lightly, “You’ll be needing boots if we’re going out.”

“ _No_ ,” Dwalin insisted as his mother carried him up to the nursery in search of his missing shoes.

“Ah, you’ll find that’s a lovely thing about language,” Balin heard her saying as she walked away. “You can say ‘no’ all you like, but I can say ‘you must’ and that’s that - ”

Balin was dressed and positively thrumming with energy. He could count the number of times he’d been to the city of Dale on one hand - at least this time he could officially begin using his other hand to keep track. Erebor was a magnificent kingdom, with their own merchants and shops enough to keep a dwarfling with a few gold coins in his pocket quite content, but there was something to be said for satisfying childish wanderlust, even if it was a chaperoned visit to a city visible from the parapets of the outer walls.

When his mother came downstairs, Dwalin on her back, now fully dressed, Balin practically ran to the door in unbridled excitement and threw it open - only to take a step back when he saw the Queen Under the Mountain herself standing on the other side.

Queen Sigdís was an imposing figure, nearly as tall as his own father and almost as broad with a thick black beard and a fierceness in her expression that was only enhanced by the stark black tattoos around her eyes and below her mouth. Throughout the land she was known by the title she’d gained for herself her in youth, the Huntress of Erebor, before she’d been called Queen Under the Mountain. Her eyes were as keen as a hawk’s and many a long winter’s suffering was alleviated through her skill with a bow. It was widely assumed that she would never marry, given her preference for the freedom afforded by a pony’s saddle under a blue sky, but the King swore in his youth he would take no other bride. It was said he’d won her over with a combination of charm and regular gifts of wargs’ fangs and orcs’ heads, preserved and delivered to her doorstep with his compliments.

Balin was in awe of her; nearly everyone was.

“Auntie!” Except, of course, Dwalin. Dwalin was a friendly dwarfling and, as a rule, was fond of everyone and everything. He was far too young to understand that certain dwarves had positions of elevated status due to circumstances of birth, marriage or both. Before she’d been Sigdís, Queen Under the Mountain or even Sigdís, Huntress of Erebor, she’d been Sigdís, daughter of Farin and his father’s elder sister.

“Afternoon, m’lad,” she said in her low, rumbling voice, crossing over to the younger child and removing his leather cap to ruffle his hair fondly. “Going out?”

“Aye, errands to run in Dale. I’d send an attendant, but I thought it’d do the lads good to have a day out,” Halldóra said, approaching the Queen with all the ease and familiarity one enjoyed with old friends. “Care to join us?”

“I would,” she said and sounded sincere enough. “But there’s a group of woodland Elves making a nuisance of themselves in the throne room. I’m afraid I’ve got to ask you to wait on your errands.”

“What?” the scribe asked, confused. “What do they mean coming here now? They certainly weren’t expected. Half the court’s gone away to war, the Greenwood’s not so far afield they wouldn’t have heard that.”

“Ah, see, _that’s_ the trouble,” Sigdís informed her, rolling her eyes in a long-suffering manner. “They don’t approve of our dealings with the Orcs. I don’t speak their tongue and you, my lucky girl, are not only the best of our translators, but the only dwarf in the Kingdom who speaks serviceable Elvish at the moment.”

“I’m hardly dressed for court,” Halldóra objected, gesturing to her simple leather traveling coat. The adornments in her ears were intricately carved, but not set with jewels, neither were the cuffs on her wrists. Even the ring in her nose was plain gold, she looked like a pauper by the standards of the court of Erebor.

Sigdís snorted, unimpressed. “I don’t need your clothes, I need your mind and your tongue - I don’t give a damn if you come naked, so long as you come.”

Halldóra smiled wryly, “Well, that might speed the talks along. Not a bad tactic, actually; shock the other party so badly they forget why they came in the first place.”

Shaking her head, Sigdís replied, “Best get that notion out of your head this instant - my brother would never forgive me if I put his lovely little wife on display for Elvish lords. Even if the cause was just. Will you come?”

“Don’t suppose I have much choice, do I?” Halldóra replied, raising an eyebrow. “I assume there’s a reason you came yourself and didn’t send a messenger.”

“Of course. I’m one of the few with the right to toss you over my shoulder and carry you to the throne room should you refuse.”

Halldóra looked at Balin, standing by the door and unable to hide his disappointment. Already he was shrugging out of his coat. He knew well their lives revolved around three equally important demands: family, honor and duty. Oftentimes, fulfilling the demands of those commitments meant fun and frivolity had to be set aside, sometimes indefinitely. “I think we can squeeze a trip to the sweets shop in, at any rate,” she said finally. “I have a feeling this won’t take long. How about a glimpse at some Elves, lads?”

Balin cocked his head curiously at her in a manner very similar to the searching look his aunt was bestowing upon his mother at the same time. “You want to bring the boys?’ she asked.

“Why not?” Halldóra smiled to herself, as if at a private joke. “Elves adore wee ones, even wee ones not of their own kind. Might soften their hearts a bit to see them.”

“Never can tell with the weed-eaters,” Sigdís shook her head ruefully. “Don’t have the measure of them, myself.”

“Well, isn’t that why you wanted me along in the first place?” her sister-in-law pointed out sweetly. Sigdís once again gave her an odd look before chuckling and leading the odd little band to the throne room.

The afternoon sun came in through the West-facing windows and made the gold laid within the walls and throne itself glow with an almost rosy luster. The Elvenking of Greenwood the Great was not among the number of representatives of that race, but he sent along in his stead an Elf very much like him, fair of face with hair like gossamer silk. They were unarmed and their robes seemed as airy and weightless as their bodies; if Balin hadn’t spared a glance at their feet to be sure, he would have thought they walked on air.

Balin hung back among those few guards who were left behind so their halls would not be left vulnerable to attack during the absence of the war party. His mother transferred Dwalin to his arms and he noticed the eyes of the Elves fix upon them for a minute. The dwarfling almost shivered and Dwalin buried his face in his brother’s shoulder, uncharacteristically shy. He did not blame his brother for being nervous of them; their smooth faces and pale, glimmering eyes were a bit frightening.

His mother was not the least bit afraid, she walked right up to the Elf who stood at the forefront of the group and inclined her head, making some expansive gesture with her right arm. She spoke, but the words washed over Balin’s ears like water being poured from a spout. The Elf replied in kind, but shifted to the common tongue when the Queen cleared her throat impatiently and gave the tall creature a significant look. “The King, my husband, is not here,” she informed him, flatly. “If you would speak about our war-making, it is to him you should apply yourselves. I do not command our armies.”

“We do not seek an audience with the King Under the Mountain,” the Elf replied, the voice high and clear, like tinkling bells. “Our King Thranduil wishes it be known his displeasure with your continued antagonism of the dread race of Morgoth.”

“Noted,” Sigdís replied disdainfully, causing Halldóra to level a significant glance at her Queen. Balin was positioned at just the right angle to see his mother fold her hands in front of her, but in the process of doing so she very quickly laid the flat side of her right hand against the palm of her left.

Iglishmek, he knew. The sign meant, ‘stop,’ and he wondered if his mother was talking to the Elves or his aunt. The Elves’ expressions had not changed; indeed, most of them were still looking at Sigdís whose mouth was drawn in a tight, thin line.

“What is the root of his Highness’ displeasure?” Halldóra asked mildly. “We have not requested funds or bodily aid. Indeed, we ourselves are providing assistance to our allies in the North, the fight is far from the borders of our kingdom and yours.”

“His Highness fears that the crashing of your swords and shields will resonate far and bring the creatures to our midst,” the Elf explained, obviously pleased to be talking to one who spoke with him more cordially. “He asks you not to court danger, nor create conflict where none exists.”

“Your lord will have to forgive my difference of opinion,” Halldóra said with a kindly smile, “but I feel that while Orcs and other foul things yet breathe upon this earth, there too breeds conflict. Are our thoughts one, my Lady?”

“Indeed,” Sigdís nodded. “Our sacred halls have been ransacked and pillaged by those beasts for an Age. Our fight is long and our grudges deep-held. We will not lay down our swords at the behest of an Elf lord who now sits upon his throne, far from the seat of battle.”

The Elf bristled slightly. “We have engaged in our fair share of wars, my Lady. More than that. Our lives are long and our King has seen the rise and fall of many an Age, the rise and fall of your grandsires and ten-times great-grandsires. The toll of war is high and he wishes that your people would not put your lives and your homes in peril.” His pale eyes again sought out Balin and Dwalin, small and meek in their simple garments. “That your children might enjoy long life within these lands you still possess.”

Beside the scribe, Sigdís’s hands were clenching into fists, but Halldóra spoke first, her pleasant expression never wavering.

“How gratifying to know that your King thinks kindly on our children,” she said, looking fondly over her shoulder at her sons as well. Balin straightened up a bit and Dwalin peeped out, but his small hands clutched his brother’s shirt nervously. “We too have high hopes for them - but our hopes are not for long and idle lives. We raise our sons and daughters to know their enemy, their history and their duty. One day, when the world is cleansed of darkness, we hope they will walk beneath those Mountains held and loved by our forefathers. It is their rightful inheritance, after all, our mithril mines were never meant to provide shelter for Orcs. They weren’t made for it, as we were.”

“You would sacrifice your children for your mines,” the Elf said, a touch of disbelief coloring his tone. “We have lived beside you many centuries, but I will make no secret of it: Your ways are strange to us.”

“They must be, for we are not Elves. Nor _Orcs_ neither.” Drawing herself up and looking the Elf directly in the eyes she added, “Our lives may be shorter than yours, made shorter still by warfare, but our memories are long.”

The words were nothing extraordinary, at least not that Balin can tell. His mother’s manner was as genial when she spoke them as when she greeted the Elves, certainly Queen Sigdís was far more brash and rude in her demeanor. Yet, after she spoke the Elf tensed visibly and his face looked cross and wrathful. Then it was smooth again, smooth and inscrutable as a polished stone. Beside his mother, an expression flitted across the Queen’s face that was clear as day to Balin. It was an unmistakable look of triumph. But, why?

“You have a clever tongue, my Lady Halldóra,” the Elf said stiffly. “His Majesty chooses his courtiers wisely. I see there is little else to say on this matter. You have heard our Lord’s misgivings.”

“We have,” Sigdís nodded, her voice firm. “And I will surely tell the King _all_ that was said today.”

The Elf nodded jerkily and spoke some words of farewell, Balin assumed, but he did not understand them. His mother bowed slightly, but did not lower her eyes from the Elf’s and replied in kind. The Queen said nothing, only folded her arms, a slow smile of satisfaction curved her lips and when the Elves had withdrawn she clapped a hand on Halldóra’s shoulder. “Well done,” she said approvingly. “And time enough to get to the market and back. Do you want an escort?”

“A small one would be nice,” she said graciously. “Or yourself alone, if you’ve time to spare.”

“I might at that,” the Queen said thoughtfully. “I think I deserve it. Wait for me by the gate.” On her way to her chamber to exchange her robes for sturdier garments, she paused and bent low to look into Balin’s eyes. “I hope you were paying heed to your mother, laddie. You can learn a great deal from her.”

Ordinarily, when he was instructed to pay attention and learn, the dwarf he was meant to learn from was his father. Balin knew his mother was brilliant, he knew she had a mind for language and script and stories like no other, but he thought he could learn all she knew from the books she read. It never occurred to him that there might be something about his mother _herself_ that he ought to emulate.

Balin was still puzzling over this a fortnight later, when their army returned flush with victory, eager to see their loved ones and home again. His father swept himself, his mother and his brother in his arms all at once. As Halldóra laughed and kissed him, Balin spied a hint of pure white peeking out from beneath her left sleeve. With Dwalin in his arms and one hand on Balin’s shoulder Fundin walked with his family to the mead hall for the celebratory feast and demanded to know what transpired in his absence.

“Ama fighted Elves,” Dwalin told him, his brown eyes wide and his voice proud.

Fundin let out a low whistle. “Did she win?”

“Ama did not ‘fighted’ Elves,” Halldóra corrected Dwalin gently. “Ama _fought_ Elves. And of course I won,” she added with a sly smile up at her husband.

“As if there was any doubt!” Thrór approached them then and bent to knock his forehead against Halldóra’s bracingly. “It’s a comfort to know that some of our finest warriors remain to keep our Mountain well-guarded when the battle-horns sound.”

Later, when his father was putting Dwalin down to sleep in his cot, Balin sat up in his own bed and asked him a question. “Ada,” he whispered so he would not wake his brother. “You know Ama didn’t _really_ fight Elves, don't you?”

“What makes you say that?” Fundin asked, crossing the room and sitting beside his eldest son.

Balin’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. Surely his father did not need him to explain. “Well...she didn’t take up a sword. She’s not a warrior. She just spoke to them.”

Fundin smiled and bid Balin lay himself down. “And what happened after she spoke with them?”

“They...” he paused and realized there was only one word to describe the Elves’ actions. “They withdrew.”

“There’s more than one way to fight a war.” From the doorway of his parents’ bedroom came his mother’s voice. Halldóra was leaning against the doorjamb, dressed for bed, her hair and beard unbound. She looked very pretty in the candlelight and his father smiled a special sort of smile that Balin knew was just for her. “Your weapon master tells you to know your enemy, eh?”

“Aye,” Balin nodded, closing his eyes as his father bent to kiss him on the forehead before he rose and departed for his chamber. “Know their weak spots and take advantage of them.”

“Very sound advice,” Halldóra nodded, sitting on her son’s bed in the place her husband just vacated. “Sometimes the most potent knowledge isn’t about old wounds, weak sword arms and bad knees. Sometimes it’s _knowing_ your enemy. Their history. The things that trouble them. There’s a power in that and no mistake. Sometimes, you don’t have to lift a sword to defeat them. Sometimes you don’t even have to look severely on them - usually better if you don’t, truth be told. More flies with honey than vinegar and all.”

“I don’t understand,” Balin yawned. His mother tucked his blanket under his chin and smiled at him.

“Someday you will, my clever boy,” she said bending down to kiss him. “Good night, dearie. Have a good sleep, I’ll see you in the morning.”

And although he could not say precisely why, in that moment and forever after Balin had the sense that his mother might have been one of the most powerful people he’d ever known.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I fought with myself on the 'Mrs. Thrór is Fundin's big sister, surprise!' thing, but I actually really, REALLY like the idea that A: Fundin has a big sister who kicks ASS and B: She marries the Best King Ever (barring gold madness). My mental image of her is heavily influenced by the WETA concept art of the female dwarf with the AMAZING beard and facial tattoos. If it's not to your taste, it probably won't be coming up a lot in my other stories, so feel free to ignore it.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dark chapter ahead, guys. I'd rate this one PG-13.
> 
>  **TRIGGER WARNINGS:** Discussion/description of **murder by poison** , **execution by hanging** , **amputation** as **corporal punishment** and **ableism.**
> 
> I took the term 'ifarukh' from the Dwarrow-Scholar's Khuzdul-English Dictionary.

Balin was fifty when he witnessed his first execution. That was the word for it in the Common Tongue, the word the Men of Dale used when they woke to find the front gates of the mountains sealed and noted that the stalls of the dwarrow merchants were still shut tight by midday. None would enter or leave the Mountain until the sun rose again on its peak. The Dwarves of Erebor called the punishment something rather different: _Ifarukh_. In the language of Men, it translated literally to “lesser life” and was both more and less than a death sentence.

This solemn punishment was carried out rarely under the Mountain and, indeed, was not witnessed more than once a generation among all the Dwarf kingdoms that yet remained below the earth for the crime that demanded this penance must be unforgivable by mortals. So this one was. 

“Kinslaying,” Halldóra told Balin the night before, shaking her head as though she still could not quite believe it. “Not only that, he killed a child.”

Thieves and swindlers were jailed, fined or exiled. Debtors and counterfeiters worked off their losses or ill-gotten gains in menial work too lowly to be called trade or craft. The worst criminals of Erebor and the rarest were the murderers. To kill in the defense of one’s home or as part of an attacking army of shieldbrothers in the service of one’s liege lord was a good and honorable thing, but to strike down another dwarf in cold blood was a foul and loathsome act.

Men, Balin knew, hanged such offenders in their villages. On the outskirts of the city the hunting parties came back with stories of corpses hanging from trees or scaffolds, unburied, flesh sagging and twisted on white bones while birds pecked out their eyes and tongues. Men and Dwarves were different in many matters, including the punishment of their murderers.

They were undeserving of the nobility of a death by sword or axe. No rope could snap a Dwarf’s thick neck. To die by burning would dishonor the fire itself. No, dwarves did not murder their murderers, but convicted suffered death of a different sort; their hands were severed at the wrist. A dwarf without hands could neither toil no craft and a life without work was no kind of a life.

As a member of the King’s Guard, however young and untested, Balin was to attend the execution, with his regiment. It was held in the largest of Erebor’s underground courtyards and a goodly portion of the mountain city was in attendance, save the working and the very young. To witness such a thing was more a deterrent to crime than all the heads staked on pikes Men placed on the outskirts of their cities, which Dwarves found grotesque. Let trophies of conquest be placed on the battlements, let the heads of wargs be stuffed and mountains and let their master’s bodies become foot for carrion, but to so disfigure a member of one’s own race was, to their minds, an act almost as vile as the crime itself.

This dwarf, who Balin did not know, but whose face he would not soon forget, was charged with the hemlock poisoning of his cousin, his cousin’s wife and their ten year old son. It was a grisly business and all over a necklace of pearls, rare and precious, that had been gifted to the couple upon their marriage. Balin was not present for the trial, but the news reached his ears quickly. When asked _why_ he had committed such an atrocious act, the accused dwarf did not deny his actions and merely said, “I wanted it.”

The court was dressed somberly, few trinkets adorned the ears, noses, throats, fingers and wrists of those dwarves who stood by as the condemned was led by Thráin and Fundin to kneel before what seemed, at first glance, to be an ordinary butcher’s block. Ordinary, until one noted the shackles for the arms. Balin was close enough that he could see the condemned’s face cleary and it was nothing like he imagined. As he lay in bed, anticipating the day, he assumed the dwarf would fight and howl and gnash his teeth, wailing his remorse until the stone walls shook. Or else that he would weep, head bowed. He did neither.

The dwarf walked between the noblemen with his head uplifted, eyes restlessly searching crowd, resting briefly when he caught a glimpse of a glimmer of gold or silver, but always moving on soon thereafter. There was a wildness and a strain in the face, but it was not the fear of what was to come. The dwarf did not spare a glance at the wooden block or pewter chains.

The King himself was too perform the severing and he was the most simply attired of the court, though his crown was firmly in place. The queen stood a few paces behind, next to Balin’s mother whose quill restlessly moved over the parchment she held where she recorded Thrór’s recital of the crime and the sentence of guilt.

When asked once again if had any final words to say in his defense the dwarf regarded his king with bloodshot, wild eyes. It was the first time he devoted more than a moment’s notice to a flesh and blood creature or anything that wasn’t forged metal or cut stone. “I _wanted_ it,” he said hoarsely. “I _wanted_ it.”

Thrór gave the order and Thráin and Fundin locked the cuffs tight over his arms and held him steady. Thrór lifted a heavy axe that looked more like a meat cleaver in appearance than anything else and swung it hard and sure. The room held its breath. Only then did the dwarf cry out.

Balin’s eyes were itching and burning; he had not blinked since the dwarf spoke, too afraid that if he did, he would close his eyes and be thought a coward by his fellows. One of his companions stiffened beside him, another gagged audibly and still a third cringed and turned his head away as blood spattered over their king. None of them were faint-hearted, they had seen blood before, but this was different. This was terrible.

With his cousin and father still holding the dwarf fast, the healers rushed forward with cauteries to burn the stumps and stopper the bloodflow. The wounds were significant, but he would live, though how long no one could say. If he died soon after, so much the better. The life left to him was no sort of life.

At dinner that evening, Balin had no stomach for his meat, which was not helped at all by Thorin and Dwalin stealing off his plate and demanding details of what he had witnessed while they were in the nursery.

“Was there a lot of blood?” Thorin asked, wiping the juice from his roast boar off his chin with his sleeve.

“Did it shoot out?” Dwalin asked around a mouthful of bread, making an accompanying grand arm gesture that almost overturned his tankard of small beer. “Or just drip?”

He was saved from answering by a timely intervention by Thorin’s mother. “That’s quite enough, you little ghouls!” she said, giving them both a sharp turn of their ears. Balin saw her looking very grim earlier during the act itself, but now she seemed her usual self. Her plate was clean, anyway. “Leave Balin in peace to finish his supper.”

“But _Ama_ ,” Thorin whinged pitifully. “He hasn’t _told_ us anything and we’ve never _seen_ an execution before.”

“And by the Maker’s hammer you never shall,” Thráin, who was walking to them to deliver the baby to his wife, added sternly. “Nor perform one yourself,” he added with a significant look at Thorin who had the decency - or at least the sense - to look chastened.

“You can have the rest,” Balin told the lads, rising from the bench and making to leave the grand dining hall where the nobility took their supper. “I’m not hungry.”

Balin walked the long corridors, at first thinking he meant to return to his family’s suite of rooms, then turning toward the library, then again the training yard before he finally found himself back to the place that had been haunting his day and would probably haunt his dreams. It was largely empty now, the block had been removed and the floors cleaned...though Balin saw a few specks of blood in the flagstone joinings, where they’d escaped the scrub brush. They were brown now. In Balin’s memory they were bright red.

He folded his arms across his chest and felt the bile rise in his throat, even has he turned away from the small spatters on the floor. What would it be, to lose _both_ hands? He knew warriors who came back from the battlefield armless and legless, but they all had at least one working limb. To lose both at once, to never swing a sword or a quill or turn the pages of a book without aid...unthinkable

A shudder wracked his whole frame and he squeezed his eyes shut tight; he would prefer death.

“You’re late, I’m afraid,” a familiar voice echoed behind him and Balin turned, startled. Thrór was standing in the shadows and approached him slowly. His face and hands were scrubbed free of blood, his tunic was new, but he wore no ornamental robes above it. Even his crown had been laid aside. He looked more uncle now, than king. “That was a bad joke; I saw you there today. Brave lad, not to turn away.”

“I thought I was alone,” Balin explained himself, half in apology, half in defence.

“So did I,” the older dwarf replied, eyes crinkling briefly at the edges when he smiled. It was a small, sad smile, but better than the grave expression Balin saw before etched in his face. Such seriousness did not at all suit their king who could be counted on the laugh the longest, sing the loudest and drink the _most_ at any feast. But then, Balin remembered he had not dined earlier either. “Bad business. Very bad business. My father was spared this, but I’ve done it twice now. Not any easier the second time.”

Under different circumstances, Balin would have asked what the crime was the first time Thrór carried out the ‘bad business.’ He would have been as curious as Thorin and Dwalin were, but now he did not care to know the crime. He knew the sentence, truly _knew_ it in a way reading about it could never replicate and he did not want to know what caused it.

“Justice,” Thrór said, standing beside Balin and tilting his head down at the lad in a thoughtful manner. “Not often lovely for the eye to see. Occasionally it is noble. But it is always necessary.”

Balin nodded mutely. He’d read his fair share of the law books, those his could understand, anyway. He knew the histories. If crime went unpunished and corruption was allowed to flourish, kingdoms collapsed. But he could not think of that dwarf and the blood and the madness that lurked just behind his eyes even as he sagged and collapsed from the pain without feeling sick.

“If you’re wondering how such things can come to pass, I haven’t any answer for you,” Thrór told him, usefully since Balin _had_ been wondering just that and uselessly since he knew there was no satisfactory reason. Evil lurked in all corners of the earth, even in their shining city of gold. It could not be allowed to thrive. One of Thrór’s heavy hands fell on Balin’s shoulder. "Probably he regrets it all now."

It was the oddest thing, but Thrór’s voice did not condemn the dwarf at all. His tone and eyes held only deep pity. Beside him, Balin turned his head away, mouth twisting into a frown. The king almost smiled again. "You disagree? Well, speak up, m'lad, all family here."

"He didn't look very sorry," Balin spoke at last, tilting his head up at his King and uncle. "Not even after...not even after."

Thrór mulled the words over in his mind and as he did so, Balin thought he felt the mighty warrior king quake just a little. But he must not have done. Likely an old wound was giving him trouble. For what cause should the king have to _fear_ anything to do with that dwarf's punishment? "Nay," he said after a moment, his hand falling away. "I suppose he did not."

“What will happen to him?” Balin asked, before Thrór could go.

“He’ll be put to begging.” It was an awful thing, being a beggar, unable to work to earn one’s bread and meat. If a dwarf was in such dire straits, their family usually took them in, but this dwarf had none. Not anymore.

“I don’t...for a _necklace_ ,” Balin lamented, equal parts frustration and despair. “There are thousands of necklaces about! Buy one! Go to the sea and fetch the pearls yourself - or steal one, even, I understand why someone would thieve such a thing, but to... _kill_ one’s own kin and stand by as they breathed their last and do nothing...I don’t understand.”

“You heard,” Thrór shook his head sadly. “He wanted it.”

“What sort of reason is that? How could anyone want something that badly?” Balin asked, utterly unable to comprehend such a thing. He repeated himself, feeling lost and uncomfortably reminding himself of the repeated cries of the condemned dwarf, “I don’t _understand._ ”

Thrór crossed the small space between them and placed both hands on Balin’s shoulders, looking him deeply in the eyes. The king looked almost as serious as he had when he swung that axe. “That’s because you’re a good lad. And a wise one, in spite of your years. He was neither.”

Letting out a breath that was almost a sigh, Thrór continued, “The Maker created Seven Fathers, and I hope we descendents please Him, but I am almost certain some of us don’t. Some dwarves have chinks and cracks running thin, but deep right through their hearts. Or else we suppose ourselves made of granite when we’re truly built of limestone. It takes good lads like you to show others what they can and should be.”

If Balin was but a little older and wiser - or just perhaps, a little less good - he might have understood the message beneath his King and kinsman’s words. Thrór could pity the dwarf in a way that Balin could not, because he could understand wanting something that badly. As it was, he felt he’d been paid a staggering compliment and did not quite know how to respond. ‘Thank you,’ seemed inadequate.

A clock rang out the hour and Thrór’s hands fell to his side yet again. “Hear that? I’d no idea it was so late, you’d best be getting back to your room, laddie. If your amad asks after you, tell her I kept you out and it was my own selfish fault you were late getting in. It’s true enough.”

Balin nodded and bid him goodnight, hurrying away. When he turned back to spare another parting glance at the king, he saw that Thrór had dropped to his knees on the stone and seemed to be scouring the last of the bloodstains off the floor himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I blame _A Game of Thrones_ for inspiring me to write an execution scene. Unfortunately, the education of Balin is not always about having a sass-off with Elves and bonding with Dad. I do want an Uncle Thrór, through. I have a LOT of feelings about Thrór. Mostly that I want to hug him until the dragon sickness goes away. I feel slightly icky after writing this, I hope the next chapter is full of sunshine and rainbows.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, remember how I said after last time that I hoped a future chapter would be all sunshine and rainbows? This chapter isn't it. **Warnings:** for **mental health issues** and **ableist rhetoric in discussion of mental health issues**.

Among Men it was common for their young folks on the cusp of manhood to separate from their families, go abroad and make a name for themselves away from house and home. Balin had been lodging for some years in the cells reserved for those novice members of the Guard, but when duty did not prevent him, he passed many evenings in his family’s apartments. Work and kin were given equal value among their people and a dwarf who abandoned one for the other was no true dwarf.

Balin and his mother were engaged in a spirited debate over what she considered a translation error in an Elvish rendering of one of their ancient myths. “This is exactly why we do not share our tales willingly with outsiders!” his mother jabbed a disgusted finger at the offending phrase. “They’ve made it a bloody romance, it’s not a romance!”

She would have gone on in that vein for several minutes together if Dwalin hadn’t looked up in exasperation from where he was sprawled on the floor and shushed her. He and their father were playing a game of count-and-catch with glass beads and it was clear from the frown on his younger brother’s face that he was losing.

“Are you playing high?” Halldóra asked them, raising an eyebrow when Dwalin nodded his head in the affirmative. “Be prepared to lose your money, sweetling. Your father’s a notorious cheat.”

“I’m no cheat,” Fundin replied indignantly, smiling all the same. “You don’t win because you can’t keep your mind on the game.”

Halldóra was about to make a retort when there was a knock at the front door. It was strange that they would be disturbed at this late hour, but not unheard of. Very likely Thorin had come to see if Dwalin had an hour to spare. Balin rose first and opened the door, surprised to see that it was one of Thrór’s messengers and not the eldest prince come to call.

“Good evening,” he said, stepping aside to allow the dwarf to pass.

“‘Evening, young Master,” the dwarf bowed respectfully. “Is your Lady mother at home?”

“She is,” Halldóra replied, standing by her son with a politely inquisitive look upon her face. “Is all well?”

“The King requires you in his council chambers immediately, my Lady,” the messenger favored Balin’s mother with an even deeper bow than he received. “On a matter most urgent. Will you come?”

“Of course,” Halldóra nodded. Behind her, Fundin was rising from the floor, but the messenger eyed him nervously.

“Begging my Lord’s pardon,” he bowed again, so low that the tip of his long nose practically brushed the knees of his trousers, “but it was my Lady whom my King requested. Herself and...her eldest son. To observe.”

Halldóra favored Balin with a conciliatory pat on the elbow. “Very likely he means to finalize next year’s trade agreements and the treasury’s expenses. About time too, he’s had the scrolls on his desk for nearly a week. Come along, dearie, it’ll be dull, but it’ll be quick.”

The messenger left them once Halldóra bade him good evening and pressed a silver into his hand for his troubles. She was not wearing her court robes, but thought little of it, “If your uncle,” she said to Balin as they made their way to the council chambers, “expected me to come in my best, he ought to have held this meeting during a more reasonable hour. That’s a lesson you can take to heart: when there’s a meeting of fewer than ten and none of them are guests, there’s no need to put the effort in.”

Balin smiled and nodded, “As you say, Ama.” He was not looking his best himself, still dressed in his everyday clothes that he wore to train in, though his robes for court were hardly gathering dust. Ever since he and the King had that exchange in the courtyard, he requested Balin’s presence from time to time, provided the Guard could spare him.

Thrór approved of him and clearly felt he might make a fine advisor someday, though he never asked the young dwarf’s opinion in any official capacity. Clear-eyed, he called him fondly. For now, Balin’s role was to observe, one that he filled well since the political dance his kin and peers were forced to play intrigued him. He found it endlessly fascinating how they could seemingly wear a second skin when it was called for and seem, in the grandeur of the court, to be almost different dwarves entirely from those he had grown up with and known intimately.

Now, for instance. His uncle was attired not in the worn tunic and trousers he donned for smith work or the mail he wore in battle, but dark robes, richly embroidered and beset with gems. Upon his silver hair he wore his heavy crown which set his brown sternly and cast a shadow over his kind eyes. Eyes which did not seem so kind when they critically surveyed Halldóra and Balin.

“This is how you dress in the presence of your King?” he asked. Balin nearly laughed, the question was so absurd, but he bit his tongue, for it did not sound from his voice that his uncle was joking.

His mother too seemed taken aback, but she was bolder than he. “When my King summons me from my rooms at this hour, aye, this is precisely how I dress. You’re lucky I took the trouble to put my boots back on.”

The queen laughed, prompting chuckles from the other dwarves assembled in the room. All save Thrór. He frowned in a curious manner, as though he couldn’t quite remember what laughter sounded like.

It was a very small assemblage of dignified and high-ranking officials. Balin not only felt under dressed, but woefully out of place among them. There was the Queen, whose face settled into a grave expression that made Balin uneasy. Prince Thráin who always looked grave, so that was nothing out of the ordinary. Andvari, the Lord of the Coin, responsible for overseeing tax collection, imports, exports and all matters of the treasury and finally, Haldr, his mother’s elder brother Keeper of the Hall of Records.

The latter two dwarves were a study in contrasts. Andvari was in his early middle years, tall, with a long yellow beard and thick fingers that now drummed restlessly atop a ledger. Uncle Haldr was older and looked it. Dark circles ringed his eyes beneath his spectacles, like his sister he was slight and short-statured, seeming all the more so for the utter lack of hair atop his head. Embarrassingly, Haldr was bald as an egg, had been as long as Balin could remember, but he never knew anyone to comment on it. Probably because his uncle could very easily change their family tree to include a bastard son of an orc along the line of succession and none would be the wiser. When one literally held the pages of the past in his hands, it was wise to remain on his good side.

None of them seemed to be so now, he was glaring at the lot of them - or perhaps it was his natural squint. In any case, he removed his pocketwatch from his coat pocket and opened it with an audible click, just to make it clear how much he thought his time was being wasted.

“Well?” Halldóra asked, glancing at each of the somber faces around her. Balin read expectation on her face, but reluctance upon the faces of her fellows. As soundlessly as he could, he slunk back into a shadowed corner of the room. It was only to observe that he had been called forth and he did not fancy getting in the King’s line of vision at the moment.

Andvari cleared his throat. “There is a bit of a...disagreement about the allotment of the treasury that is to be set aside for the purchase of victuals for the new year.”

Halldóra looked between Andvari and Thráin, bewildered. “But we drafted a new trade agreement nearly a fortnight ago. We agreed that last year’s provisions were sufficient and that the same agreement would hold. The Lord of Dale signed it.”

“Last year we came out the better,” Thrór said, before his son could answer.

“There was a surplus last year,” Thráin clarified, not quite looking his father in the eye. “And the discovery of the Heart of the Mountain was a cause for great tribute.”

“True, the mines yielded great profit then,” Halldóra acceded. “And the Arkenstone’s beauty is surpassing all that resides in the treasure house, but we don’t stand to _lose_ any gold by following the usual protocol. We won’t have more money in our coffers, but we won’t have less.”

“That’s exactly what I said!” Sigdís exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air in frustration. Evidently the debate had been raging long before Balin and his mother arrived. His aunt was peevish, her cheeks red and flushed as though she had been riding. Balin knew well that she was quickly bored by the climate of the court. A believer in plain speech, prevaricating and tip-toeing around arguments made her count many courtiers as cowards and she could not abide cowardice. “We’ve gold a-plenty to last us ‘til the world’s made new, we needn’t sacrifice food for gold.”

“This is the, ah, modified agreement. His majesty and I discussed it at length and my Lord finds it more suitable.” Andvari positioned himself between the Queen and Halldóra, unraveling the scroll and setting weights at either end to hold it in place.

Thráin drew himself up, as flustered as a cat in the rain. “I didn’t know you’d gone and drafted another!” he exclaimed, choler in his voice such as Balin had never heard. “I thought I might be consulted at least.”

“You had your chance,” his father said, coldly. Balin looked up, mouth agape before he remember that he was to _observe_ and make no comment. It was only that he had never heard his uncle speak coldly before, nor was he ever so critical about his son. “Your plans were unsuitable. These are eminently more satisfying.”

Halldóra read enough to notice once crucial provision was missing. “And aid to the poor and destitute?” she asked, looking up from the parchment. “Where is that?”

Andvari pointed to the passage, though it could hardly be called a ‘passage’ at all. It was a mere clause in the text. “Somewhat diminished,” he informed her. The hand that indicated what he spoke of hovered an inch away from the dried ink, as if he could not bear to touch the words and confirm their reality.

“This is...” Halldóra trailed off, lips pursed as she struggled to express herself in a manner that would not give offense. “Thrór, it’s not enough.”

“I told you it wasn’t,” Sigdís said severely. “Our son agrees, Andvari agrees, Halldóra agrees. I haven’t asked his opinion, but I’m sure Haldr agrees!”

The dwarf in question raised both his hands, palms up. “I only take the scrolls to the archives,” he protested, but the frown beneath his mustache and downward slant of his bushy eyebrows spoke volumes about his disapproval.

“Nevertheless,” Sigdís pressed on, fixing Haldr with a glare that would melt steel. “Your queen, your heir, your chief advisors feel you are wrong in this. Does that not satisfy you?”

“I am King. I need only be satisfied with myself,” Thrór said, and again his voice was like the winds of winter.

All was silence. Then Halldóra spoke in a voice which trembled with suppressed feeling, “Your people will suffer.”

“Nay,” Thrór shook his head stubbornly. “They may have to tighten their belts a few notches, but better they miss a few meals than see the glory of our kingdom diminished.” The points of his crown shone like knives as he stood tall and erect. “The latest trade agreement is to be sent to the Lord of Dale for his seal. I want the other destroyed. I would not have my people believing their king does not know his own mind.”

Turning on his heel, Thrór dismissed them from the chamber, shaking off his wife’s hand when she lay it upon his arm to restrain him as he swept away. Sigdís spoke not a word to them, but strode out after her husband the heels of her boots striking the stone hard with every step.

“It is only a very... _rough_ draft,” Andvari said, removing the weights from the scroll and rolling it to tuck it under his arm. “I can have another, presentable version written up on the morrow.”

“The morrow,” Thráin raised a hand to his brow and massaged the bridge of his nose briefly, before he recollected that he was in company and ceased the motion. “Aye. I shall collect it from you.”

“I’ll take this,” Haldr said, brandishing the old trade agreement before tucking it into his breast pocket. “Hold it in the archives ‘til the new agreement is signed. You might have need to reference it, Andvari. If you do, you know where to find me.”

“Aye, down in the vaults, like the ornery old bat that you are.” Andvari smiled, but it was a pale imitation of mirth. “I bid you good night. There is...much that must be done.”

Halldóra nodded and they all went back to their homes, Haldr following his sister and nephew part of the way. Neither of them spoke, but Balin had rarely seen his mother look so troubled. The last time he recalled seeing her in such a state was the previous year when Dwalin was having great difficulties in his schoolwork. Last year, Thrór signed the trade agreement with nary a care, using his mother’s back for a writing desk on the training field. When was the last time he had seen his uncle come to watch the young warriors fight. A month past?

“Did he mean what he said?” Balin asked his mother quietly. “That it is better for subjects to go hungry for the glory of the Kingdom?”

Haldr snorted, cocking his head to squint up at his nephew, “You find glory in that, do you laddie?”

Balin colored, feeling admonished, but his mother held up a hand to hush his uncle. “It’s a fair question,” she replied. “And, I can tell you true, dearest that...when he spoke it, he meant it. As for whether or not he...in his _heart_...”

His mother trailed off and shook her head. Balin, in an attempt to answer his own question, sorry he asked since it seemed only to add to her distress said, “Well, it hardly matters. He is the King.”

Haldr’s mouth twisted behind his beard and his eyebrows were one dark line on his forehead. “Aye, he is that.” Favoring his sister with a kiss and his nephew with a rough pat on the arm, he left them and made his way down to the vaults.

When they returned to their rooms, she spoke not a word to anyone and put herself right to bed. Fundin did not inquire the particulars of his eldest son, preferring to join his wife and hear the account from her own lips, or, if she would not speak, to offer her what comfort he could provide. Dwalin seemed blissfully unaware that anything was amiss at all and only asked Balin to play a game with him before he left.

His mind was so preoccupied that Dwalin beat him soundly three times at cards before Balin finally bid him good night and returned to his chambers on the other side of the mountain. His sleep was restless and his masters scolded him for the first time in years for his distraction the following day. Yet after witnessing the scene from the night previous, what could he be but distracted? His comrades tried at first to cajole him into a better humor, joking and ribbing him, but Balin’s distracted smiles and insincerely laughter eventually made them leave off. By the end of the day, no one even noticed when he skipped the evening meal.

While the rest of the Mountain supped, Balin returned to the council chambers, as once he had done to the central courtyard. Even now he could not walk through the place without feeling a faint tickle of dread at the back of his mind. Even though it daily bustled with activity and the memory of a thousand happy moments were lined up against the remembrance of that one terrible day he still found his eyes lingering on the grooved between the joined stones, looking for any lingering trace of blood.

The room was darker than it had been last evening, with only a single torch burning low, unattended. It was colder than usual without fires roaring in the massive hearths on either side of the chamber. The vaulted ceilings were black as night and one could imagine them extended ever upward, to the heavens where the Maker watched over His children, one eye on their doings, the other on His hammer.

 _The Maker created Seven Fathers,_ he remembered his uncle’s words of yesteryear clearly in his mind, _and I hope we descendents please Him, but I am almost certain some of us don’t._

The chill of the room reminded him uncomfortably of how cold the King’s voice was the night before and how alien. It was utterly unlike Thrór to display such callousness. Daily he walked among his people, inspecting the bounty of the mines, but also descending into the depths to watch the miners at work. He traveled to the distilleries to see (and sample), their wares, watched the tanners and the dyers and the weavers ply their trade. There was no one under the Mountain from the youngest babe still in swaddling to the oldest grandmother whose gnarled hands still crafted gilded veils of extraordinary beauty who had not, at one point or another, seen or spoken to the King. He was much beloved by the people for he loved them dearly. There was nothing of love in this latest decree, only greed.

The sound of the door on the far side of the room opening startled Balin out of his thoughts. Without pausing to consider his actions, he darted behind one of the tall columns lining the hall, his dark clothes and black hair blending seamlessly with the gloom.

Three figures made their way in and he could identify them by their outlines alone. His mother. Thráin. And Andvari. None of them were dressed in their robes for court, if Balin didn’t know better, he would have assumed they sought to attract as little notice as possible.

“The new contract is complete,” Andvari said, moving to one of the darkened torches to light it.

 _What are you, a goblin?_ Balin thought to himself shamefully as he shrank further into the shadows. Once Andvari lit the torches, he would be seen at once. _Come out of there, beg their pardon and leave!_

“No more light,” Thráin spoke up sharply. “We shan’t tarry long.”

Andvari nodded and entered into the small pool of light cast upon the table. “It is as you see,” he said as Halldóra and Thráin gathered around to read it, their backs to Balin. “None will starve.”

“But only a few will be satisfied,” Halldóra concluded, bringing a hand to her brow wearily. “Oh, this is...”

“It is the order of the King,” Andvari supplied for her. “It has not been sent to the Lord of Dale, though His Majesty has given it his approval. And his signature.” The fingers of his left hand were splayed against the tabletop, tapping nervously. “Now, I know Haldr has the other scroll in the vaults. And you heard His Majesty’s wish that one of the documents be thrown on the fire. And _one_ of them must be destroyed, of course.”

His voice sounded strange to Balin, coming in fits and starts, words strangely emphasized. He saw his mother’s head turn up sharply, listed to Thráin inhale deeply and then hold the breath for a full count of ten. They seemed to be hearing something in Andvari’s words that was unclear to Balin, shrouded and straining to understand from his hiding place.

Andvari cleared his throat and began again, “I am sure we can trust yourselves and Haldr to see that the proper document is done away with. As Thrór said, it would not do for the people to believe the King does not know his own mind.”

Neither prince nor scribe said a word. Andvari bowed to them and bid them farewell, closing the door behind him quickly. Understanding came slowly to Balin. The first inkling of what the three meant to do came as Andvari left the room and the horror of the realization grew when his mother and cousin began to speak at last.

“It’s come to this,” Thráin said dully staring at the words upon the scroll as if they were a death warrant for someone he held dear. “I hoped...”

“We all did,” Halldóra replied tightly. “And yet...and yet.”

Thráin stalked away from the table and came so close to the place where Balin was crouching that he held his breath. Luck was with him, or perhaps utterly against him, for the side of Thráin facing him was sightless. The pitted socket that once held his left eye stared at him, but he went undetected when Thráin turned away and stood beside his mother, the two illuminated in profile.

The dim torchlight played tricks with their faces, making them seem at once terribly young and unfathomably old. To Balin they seemed strangers, unknown and unknowable, then all of a sudden the light would touch their features fully and they were the same as they had always been, lord and lady, cousin and mother to him.

“Conspirators,” Halldóra tested the word on her tongue and shuddered. “I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Then don’t say it,” Thráin rebuked her sharply. “Or would you call us traitors? Is that more fitting.” With a low growl, he pounded his fist on the table. “Damn us,” then, more quietly, “damn _him._ ”

“Hush,” the scribe shushed him. “He’s not to blame, if he knew, truly _knew_ what misery he was bringing down upon all our heads, he would perish of shame. Your father is a good soul.”

Thráin turned to look at her sadly. “If he is good, then what are we? I would be called cold, I would be called cowardly, but I would not be called disloyal and yet - ”

“We _are_ loyal,” Halldóra insisted, with such quiet passion that she seemed as determined to convince herself as she was to convince her prince. “To _him_. I took and oath of fealty to your father, not his affliction. It is not your father who speaks and acts, you must believe that.”

Thráin said nothing, only held his breath and twisted the heavy metal ring around his middle finger distractedly. “It must be done,” he breathed at last, squaring his shoulders. “For his sake as well as his peoples’.”

“Aye,” Halldóra agreed quietly. “So it must. Will you...we must have his signet ring.”

Thráin’s previous resolution seemed to crumble. “By the Maker, is this loyalty? Thievery? Forgery? Must we break all vows of kinship and oaths of fealty?”

“I don’t like this any more than you do!” she spoke, her voice going shrill in anger. “But I will besmirch my own conscience and honor to see that people are fed. And think,” she added this next more quietly, though no less earnestly, “ _think_. When he is himself again, when he sees what he has wrought...his regret will be more a burden on him than the affliction itself.”

Holding up a hand to stopper any further arguments, Thráin nodded, swallowing hard. “You’re right, of course. You’re always right.”

“Not always,” Halldóra wrapped her arms around herself, as if to ward off a sudden chill. “I certainly don’t feel _right_. I feel wretched.”

Thráin lay a heavy hand upon her shoulder. “Save your wretchedness for when the deed is done,” he advised.

“Too late,” she hung her head and sighed, then lifted her eyes, confiding, “I’ve already begun creating my offering for the purging of the deed.”

Taking up the scroll and tucking it away in his doublet, Thráin motioned toward the door and Halldóra followed him. “I’m sure it will be a beautiful offering,” he said as they left.

“It ought to be,” Balin heard his mother say before the door shut behind them. “It is an ugly offense.”

Far from fleeing the room once it was vacated, Balin slid silently to the floor, muffling his moan of disbelief with his fist. His heart was pounding and the blood rushed in his ears, throbbing painfully within his skull. _Why_ had he remained behind? He ought to have run from that room the second the door opened. In that moment he would have been given anything to be struck deaf, blind and mute, to have purged from his mind the words that condemned his mother and his prince. Conspirators. _Traitors_. And he knew all.

For the next three days, Balin was at war with himself. Rather than going to his family’s apartments as was his wont, he made excuses to schedule extra time in training, but it was no use. He had neither his aunt nor his brother’s temperament, where foul thoughts and terrible moods could be sweated out of him through exertion.

The words would not leave his mind: _Conspirator. Traitor._ In his dreams he saw his mother with her beard shorn and head shaved, drummed out of Erebor, sent into exile while his father was forced to hold her still for the humiliation and Thrór spoke the words of banishment in that same cold, clipped way he spoke of elevating the glory of the kingdom by depriving his people.

So troubled was he that by the evening of the third day, lying in his bed, knowing sleep would not come to him and that whatever rest he did find would be plagued with nightmares, Balin made up his mind to do something about it.

The plan was only half-formed as he dressed and donned his boots, making his way out the door silently as a ghost. He would descend into the archives. Surely they had not destroyed the second scroll, not so soon. Surely it remained shelved with the other trade agreements. If it was to...disappear, however briefly, their plan would be foiled, or at least delayed.

Without knowing that the second trade agreement had indeed been destroyed, it would be too risky to replace it with the original. By the time the second agreement resurfaced, perhaps Thrór would be himself once again and would tear the thing asunder himself. Surely, _surely_ that was better than treason.

Did this make Balin himself a conspirator? He did not like to dwell on the possibilities, but he was neither forging the King’s signature nor actively disobeying his direct orders. He only sought to save them all from themselves

Balin had a key to the archives, given to him by his mother. The schedule of the Guard did not lend itself well to browsing and reading in solitude, but she deemed him trustworthy enough to make use of the library after hours. Trustworthy. He could have been sick to remember how easily the word fell from her lips, those same lips which condoned conspiracy and oathbreaking.

When Balin saw the fire crackling in the grate of the reading room, he should have turned back. It was too late for such a conflation, there was no one to tend or douse it. Or there should not have been. Lack of sleep dulled his wits and preoccupation with just what sort of noblewoman his mother was drowned out all the alarms at the back of his mind that screamed, _Danger!_

He found the trade agreements easily enough, for they were some of the most frequently read scrolls the Kingdom boasted. They were housed in long shelves, neatly rolled and placed in rows by decade. Last year’s agreement he found at the end of a row, promising a year of plenty for the Mountain. But the place beside it was blank.

“Lost something?”

Balin jumped and spun around, hand going to the dagger on his belt. It lingered, but did not tighten when he realized who approached him was Haldr. Swallowing, he stood there, mouth agape, like an idiot, like a thief caught in the act - and that was what he _was_ , wasn’t it?

Haldr snorted, a sound of annoyance and amusement rolled into one. He stepped around Balin, forming a small, but resolute barrier between the young dwarf and the case. “I’m afraid the item you’re looking is no longer a part of the collection,” he said, removing a scroll from a pocket within his coat. “Perhaps I can interest you in something similar - I would say altogether improved.”

If Balin didn’t know better, he would have thought the King had seen the error of his ways and agreed to the reasonable terms. There was his signature, stark and bold as anything and so too had the symbol of his house been pressed into the red wax beside it with a firm hand. As though nothing at all was out of the ordinary, as though Balin’s entire world had not been turned upside-down, Haldr rolled the scroll and placed it beside its fellows, closing the drawer and folding his arms as he looked appraisingly up at Balin.

“Don’t look so lowly, lad,” he said gruffly. “You’d think someone had died.”

“You knew?” he managed to choke out. “You...allowed it?”

“Allowed?” Haldr arched a brow and shook his head, looking very much like his sister. “It’s not for me to allow or forbid. I only take the papers down to the archives.” Giving Balin a half pat, half shove on the arm, he directed him down the main floor of the archives. “Sit,” he ordered, pulling out a chair. Balin obeyed, utterly at a loss, numb with disbelief.

“I’m getting you a drink,” Haldr informed him. “Don’t run off now.”

Balin had no intention of running off, nor did he think he could if he tried. His legs felt weak and his heart heavy with grief. His uncle said he looked as though someone had died and in truth, he felt that way. Not physical death, but it was as if he experienced the deaths of his notions of who his family was, who his king was, what his very _life_ was. Erebor was call the Lonely Mountain, but the name never indicated solitude to Balin. Theirs was a prosperous kingdom without equal, standing tall and proud above the censure of Elves or the common squabbles of Men. Their line was ancient and noble, their laws just, their conduct above reproach in all things.

Loyalty, honor, duty. What did any of it mean now?

Balin found a small tumbler of an amber liquid poured out before him, the height of two stout dwarven fingers. “I get it from a fellow runs a still around the side of the mountain near the stables,” Haldr said, knocking back his own glass in one swallow. “Doesn’t want to pay his taxes, the ingrate. If his brew wasn’t so potent, I’d see him fined for it. As it is...well, you were contemplating a bit of theft yourself, eh? Drink up, then.”

The liquor burned his mouth and throat. Balin did not choke on it, but Haldr read his distaste in his expression. “No stomach for it?” he asked, refilling his own glass. “There’s rotgut worse than this in the world, laddie, no mistake.”

Drink was meant to prompt ease and relaxation. This brew just made Balin feel queasy. Still, he finished the glass, even as the taste sickened him.

“What did you mean to do?” Haldr asked him, pulling up a chair and folding his arms across the table, looking at Balin severely over the top of his spectacles. “Or _do_ you mean to do?”

“They were disloyal,” Balin managed, eyes on the table, not meeting his uncle’s piercing gaze. “It’s _treason_.”

“So it is,” Haldr nodded. “They committed treason. And you were dropping eaves. What’s that old line about two wrongs making rights?”

When Balin did not answer, his uncle pressed on, leaning across the table. “Eyes up, laddie. I want to see your face when you give me answer. What is it you want? Would you have your lord father clap your lady mother in irons?” 

Balin’s head came up sharply and balked, despite his nightmares about his mother’s shorn head and his father’s restraining hands. “My father would _never_ ,” he began, but was very quickly spoken over.

“Would he not?” Haldr asked rhetorically, leaning so far across the table that Balin smelled the spirits on his breath. “If he lived in accordance to your narrow notions of loyalty, he would have no other choice.”

“Thór is _King_ ,” Balin persisted, trying to make sense of it all. It was one thing to tell a white lie to a busybody peddler or even cheat at cards and quite enough to deny a direct order from one’s sovereign. There were laws and customs to be followed. Without them only chaos would follow, Balin learned that lesson when he was fifty. If the dwarves who held the highest offices in the land could not be trusted to abide by the law, who could?

“Aye, he is King,” Haldr nodded. “I’m pleased to see you’ve been paying attention. Let’s see if you can’t do one better. A king’s name may live on after his body returns to stone and his bones crumble to ashes, but a king is only a dwarf, after all. And dwarves are...”

“Mortal,” Balin said, feeling like a child who failed to grasp the finer point of a poem.

“Very good,” his uncle replied, but there was no praise in his voice nor pride in his expression. “Unless, of course, the king is Father Durin reborn. I’m no soothsayer, but I can confidently say that if Durin VII walks amongst us, he’s not Thrór.

“Yet Thrór’s name will live on. And the records of his deeds. Would you have it known that Thrór, son of Dáin, son of Náin, King Under the Mountain was a tyrant who let his people starve while he perched atop his golden horde, heedless of their suffering?”

“He’s not a tyrant!” Balin raised his voice, but the sound of it was muffled by the hundreds of heavy tomes that closed them in. His declaration did not echo throughout the vaults. Once it was spoken, the sound was gone.

“Ah, but he _is_ ,” Haldr wagged a finger in correction. “Or he will be. Mark me, as keeper of our histories, if these dictates come to pass, this is how he will be remembered. One evil act can wipe out a thousand kindnesses. And one cruel law can topple a kingdom. I’ve seen it all written out before and I hope I shall never witness it during my lifetime. You spoke of loyalty. I say your mother and the prince are loyal to the _soul_ of the King.”

It was not a prospect Balin ever considered, that a body could be kind and cruel, good and wicked at the same time. When he thought of his uncle the king, he thought of his kindness and his generosity, his humor and his strength. Even so, he could not deny what he had seen, what he had heard. He thought the king of the small council meeting a stranger, but it was Thrór all the time.

 _No,_ his mind rebelled. _It cannot be._ Yet it was.

“As you say, Thrór is no tyrant,” Haldr went on, sitting once again on his chair, eyeing his drinking glass speculatively. “He would not commit an act of tyranny. And so he has not. Do you understand?”

No, Balin did not understand, but he was beginning to. The fire was burning low now. Nearly all that remained of the blaze were stubbornly burning embers among the ashes of what never was.

“It’s late,” Haldr said, pushing himself away from the table, collecting the glasses and bottle of spirits. “Best hie you home, laddie.”

It seemed he wandered the halls and streets of Erebor all night, though in reality little more than an hour had passed from the time he left his room. For the longest time he thought himself meandering without any destination in mind, but his feet took him to the door of his family’s apartment. It eased open just as he came to a stop before it and his mother emerged, her hair covered with a veil.

Contrary to his expectations, she did not seem at all surprised to find him there. “Queer hour to come visiting,” she observed. “Still, I can’t complain after three days of silence.” Holding out her hand, she took his and squeezed his fingers, asking, “Come with me to temple?”

Balin nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He knew not whether he would condemn her or beg her for forgiveness.

The temple doors were open, day and night, for the dwarves of Erebor to come and go as they pleased. Just outside the door was a shelf of neatly folded shawls and veils. Balin availed himself of one to cover his head as tradition dictated before he stepped into the holy space. It was silent now, there was no chanting or song as filled the chambers on the high holy days, but it was not dark inside. The altar flame was constantly lit and tended to by the temple _juzrâl_ , the dwarves who performed holy rites.

Halldóra removed a scroll from the inner pocket of her room and unfurled it, letting Balin peer at it over her shoulder. It was an illuminated text, beautifully scripted and colored with ink that was as bright and bonny as a jeweled necklace. The script was that of Khazad-dûm, he knew instantly. It seemed to be a poem, but as his eyes darted over the page, reading snippets here and there _his people were hungry and their enemies were like wolves...‘O! Unhappy he who would value gold above his subjects and halls!’...blood shall be shed..._ he realized it was unfinished.

“It’s an old custom, one not much practiced when offerings are to be burnt,” his mother told him when he looked at her questioningly. “A reminder that all that we create can someday be destroyed. There is no true completion. Only what was, what is and what will be.”

She ascended the steps to the Zarârgharâf where the flames burned hot and let the scroll, so painstakingly rendered, blacken and char. Halldóra shielded her eyes and mouthed the sacred words, speaking quietly, heard only by their Maker and herself.

Orisons completed, Halldóra descended to his side, taking his hand and bidding him sit beside her. They watched the fire take the last of the parchment and then she spoke. “I might be half blind, but only half.”

Beside her Balin tensed, but his mother took one of his hands and held it in both of hers. “You knew I was there all along?”

“I did,” she nodded. “Thráin did not, and so much the better for you. He’d have hauled you out by your beard, beloved kinsman or no.”

Balin’s face felt hot and not from the fire that burned before him. “If you knew I was there, why did you let me hear that?”

“You let yourself hear it, darling,” she replied evenly. “It’s no crime, being in the council halls, even at an odd hour. You could have very easily let yourself out and gone on in happy ignorance. But you didn’t. So, what can we conclude from that?”

“I wanted to hear,” he said, dully, swallowing back the bile that rose in his throat. “I wanted to know.”

“Of course you did.” His mother dropped his hand abruptly and rose to her feet. “You’re my son, after all.”

It was true, he realized. There was a part of him that had known since he stood watching that wretched council meeting and knew that the king’s dictates could not come to pass. That something had to be done. Maybe, in a small, secret way, he also knew who would be the ones to do it.

“We’re all got to grow up sometime,” Halldóra remarked, smiling sadly. Standing she was taller than he was sitting, so she bent and kissed his forehead as once she did when he was a child. “If only you didn’t have to grow up in such times as these.”

She made to leave him, caressing his hair before she turned to the door. “Ama?” he hesitated, then stood, looking after her. Balin once again saw the light flit and dance upon her face, but no matter its configuration, he felt he knew her again. And wondered how he could have ever thought he’d lost her. “Good night.”

“I hope so,” she smiled again and this time some measure of peace settled over her face. “And a good morning to come.”

Scant seconds after he returned to his room and lit the fire, knowing sleep would not come to him, he was surprised by the visit of his royal cousins, Throrin and young Frerin with the baby princess asleep on her eldest brother’s shoulder. They asked him for a story and he gave it to them, sensing they were as ill at ease in mind as he was.

Balin entertained them with tales of dragons and brave warriors, full of all the virtues he had been taught were the hallmark of any true Dwarf. Looking at their eager faces, drinking in his every word, made him take heart himself. It reminded him that there was something of valor in the world after all. Something of strength.

All his old convictions stirred again in his heart with the arrival of the King to his chambers. Tired, he looked, and thinner than he had been a few nights ago, puffed up with his own pride. But his blue eyes were kind and his voice warm as he spoke, “You are quite a weaver of words, Master Balin.”

When he collected his grandchildren and accompanied them back to their rooms, Balin doused the flames in the hearth and made his way to bed. Rest did not come easy to him, but it did come. The lessons of the previous few days buzzed in his mind as he was drawn into blissful unconsciousness. There was oath-making and there was loyalty. The two were not necessarily the same. A soul might be good and kind, but might also possess the capacity for great evil. The good days to come might be of uncertain duration, but they _would_ come, he hoped. At the very least, he had to hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ETA - Managed to find the dwarf word for 'priest,' 'juzrâl' - though I interpret the role itself as being more that of a rabbi than a priest. And 'Zarârgharâf' means 'Altar of Offerings' both words come from the Dwarrow Scholar's Neo-Khuzdul Dictionary.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an odd little addition, I'm not sure how I'd classify it. I suppose since the last chapter was a lot of plot, it's fitting that this one would be mostly feelings. It also became very important to me to give Balin some friends, so here's his very own Ron and Hermione! For anyone who's also reading _Live Well and Love_ , Elísif appears in that story as a very young apprentice in the library who wants to make sure the visiting scholars fill out all their paperwork.

It rained the morning Balin left Erebor to go on his first campaign. In his time with the Guard, he had been involved in little skirmishes with Orcs who ventured too close to their borders, small hunting parties and marauders for the most part, but a horde of them laid waste to a village of Men. What had once been a thriving fishing community was now a carcass, with the black remains of their wooden dwellings creeping up from the earth like charred bone. Dwarves stayed well out of the affairs of Men who were not their allies, but the decimated town was only two weeks’ ride from Dale and an attack so close to their kingdom could spell disaster. King Thrór called upon his warriors to mount up turn the tables on their enemy; the hunters becoming the hunted.

Now, in his eightieth year, Balin was old enough to go with them. The night before he had been quite merry, bolstered by the confidence of his companions and not a few tankards of mead, but now, with his head throbbing and the prospect of hours of cold, wet riding, he was not so sanguine - though he was sure that at his lowest, he was not so peevish as his brother. Dwalin was almost as tall as he was and seemed to think that height alone should determine who rode with the Guard - nevermind the fact that his beard wasn’t grown in and he’d come close to taking his own head off the first time he attempted to duel-wield with weighted practice blades.

He had been huffing and puffing and muttering to himself about how _unfair_ it was that Balin got to go to battle while he had to stay home and haul coal for the forges. He made himself so annoying that their mother, whose patience with her youngest son might well be called legendary, turned his ear sharply the night before and told him that if he didn’t have anything good to say about his brother he might as well not say anything at all. When he responded by simply making his muttering lower and less intelligible, their father took a more direct tactic than their mother and told him to hold his tongue or he’d cut it out.

That shut Dwalin up and it was in surly silence that he stood behind his mother, arms folded, scowling magnificently. Halldóra embraced and kissed his father as ever she had and Balin had to stop himself from automatically moving away to stand with his mother. He was a dwarf grown and this time he would accompany his father, not watch him charge off to battle while retreating from his family.

This time Balin stood with his father and put his arms around his mother as she rose up on her toes to embrace him around the shoulders. “Bring him back, dearest,” Halldóra whispered into his ear and placed a kiss on his cheek. “Keep him safe for me, won’t you, my brave boy? Bring him back.”

Balin nodded and promised he would, arms tightening around her at the exact moment she pulled away. He dipped his head down to rest his forehead against hers and heard the quiet prayer she spoke every time his father went to war, for a glorious fight and safe journey. When she pulled back and looked at Dwalin expectantly, the dwarfling refused to move.

Halldóra’s well of patience had run dry. “Now listen here,” she said quietly, but sharply. “I’ve had enough of this grousing. You give your brother a proper goodbye or the next weeks will be very unpleasant for you. You think hauling coal is bad? I’ve a few thousand books that need shifting, so think on _that_ before you make up your mind to be so contrary.”

That got him moving, if nothing else. Dwalin put his arms stiffly around his brother and Balin was prepared to let him go quickly, so as not to prolong the contact, but when he made to pull away Dwalin’s arms tightened unexpectedly. “Don’t...” he began in a breathless, but it sounded as though the words were stuck in his throat. “Don’t... _die_ , alright?”

For the first time in many days Dwalin met his brother’s eyes and Balin saw nothing of jealousy there. Just badly concealed fear and a reluctance to let his elder brother go.

“I’ll do my best,” Balin vowed sincerely, giving Dwalin a reassuring smile. “I’ll be back before you’ve even had time to miss me.”

Broad, rough hands descended on their shoulders and the two were gently pulled apart. “Come on, lad,” Fundin said, giving Balin’s shoulder a squeeze. “Step lively. Can’t be late going off, now.”

“You surely can, Halldóra remarked teasingly, linking one of her arms with Dwalin’s. “What army leaves without its Captain of the Guard?”

“One that’s running behind their scheduled time - _some_ dwarves under this rock value punctuality,” Fundin’s voice had a bit of a perturbed edge to it, but his eyes were crinkled and Balin knew he was trying not to smile.

“Not any dwarves _I_ know,” Halldóra remarked haughtily, but her face relaxed into a grin after her moment of playacting.

Fundin looked fondly upon his wife - he never looked anything less than fondly at his wife. If Balin didn’t know better, he’d swear their little argument was a way of stalling for time, buying a few more seconds before they would turn away from one another.

But he did know better and they did turn away. They mounted their warhorses and rode off beyond Dale, skirting Greenwood the Great as they journeyed south. Thrór anticipated that King Thranduil would have words for them - words he did not particularly want to hear - if they stumbled upon his realm and so their scouts drew them well away from the lands of the Elves.

Balin was not a scout and as a novice Guardsman rode toward the rear of their ranks. Despite his father’s position at the side of the King, he knew he would be granted no special favor, no duties more grand than those which he was capable of fulfilling - in fact, his relatively lowly position was only reinforced when he found himself put on pony duty the first night they made camp.

It was a deadly dull job, tending the ponies after a long day of riding and then keeping one eye on them while the others in the camp lit pipes and waited for their meal to stop smoking on the fire. Balin and his companions would be fed last - if the older guardsmen didn’t forget about them entirely, which was a very real possibility.

At least he was set at his post with a very good friend for company. Atli, red-brown hair braided simply down his back, leaned against a tree and squinted up at the sky overhead, idly picking his nails with the edge of his knife. “Would it be faster going through Greenwood?” he asked, grimacing as he shifted on the ground, trying to get comfortable. “I don’t care what lies we have to tell to the Elvenking, anything’s better than saddle sores.”

“For the price of a pack of lies it’d speed the journey less than two days,” Balin informed him, glancing beyond Atli at the ponies. All present and accounted for, munching on grass. He didn’t have much of a stomach for greens but after a long day’s riding, he’d eat anything that was offered to him and couldn’t help feeling slightly jealous of their equine companions.

“Still means two days less spent on horseback,” he grumbled. He gave up sitting as a lost cause and wrapped himself in his cloak, flopping down on the wet grass with a long-suffering sigh. “Our kind weren’t made for riding and that’s a fact.”

As if to prove his point Atli burrowed down deep in his cloak, grumbling to himself in a way that reminded Balin immediately of Dwalin. It was no hardship to make good on his promise to his brother here, miles from anywhere where the only thing he was likely to perish of was boredom.

There was a book at the bottom of his back, carefully wrapped in an extra tunic to prevent it being jostled about too badly, but the night was moonless and he was stationed too far from the fire to read comfortably. It wasn’t technically allowed, the bringing of books from the libraries on campaigns, but Balin had friends in high places. Not his uncle, the head librarian, Haldr would sooner have his hands off than let he go carrying a book out the front gates, but Elísif, one of the younger librarians, was fonder of breaking rules than one in her position usually was.

Elís came up to him at the feast the night previous, black eyes reflecting the blazing torchlight behind her spectacles and beckoned him into a corner. “Come along,” she whispered, inclining her head toward a doorway. Her hands were behind her back and she was jerking her head in a way that Balin, in his semi-inebriated state, found most amusing. It was with badly muffled guffaws that he followed her into the shadowed hall.

“Got you something,” she said, her voice all pride, laced with the giddiness caused by drinking too much mead too quickly. “It’s a going-away present - not a present-present, it’s not to keep, let’s call it a going-away borrowing.”

It was a leather-bound volume of middling size, _The Poems and Songs of Fraeg Silvertongue, a New Translation._ They were both slightly tipsy and nearly dropped the book on the floor - Elís swore loudly and Balin hushed her, then they’d both started giggling like children wary of being caught pilfering biscuits.

“Shh!” Balin hushed her again. “Do you want Haldr to come running over? He can _smell_ a book that’s been removed from the collection without asking.” And he swatted her shoulder with the book - between the two of them, they would have been dusting the shelves for a month if Haldr caught them and decided to punish them for their mistreatment of his books.

“Not when he’s dipping his nose in a mug of whiskey he can’t!” Elís declared merrily, tweaking his nose fondly. “Anyway, I did _ask.”_

“Could he hear you?”

“That’s immaterial,” she waved the question away like she was scattering pipe smoke. “But I will say it’s extra incentive to come back in one piece with all your gear. Think of it this way when you’re facing down the orcish scum - you’re not just fighting for halls and gold, you’re fighting for me and your uncle’s book!”

“Ah well,” Balin said, slipping the volume securely into his doublet and sliding his arm through Elís’s to go back to the mead hall. “I was thinking I’d set out intending to die for glory, but now you’ve quite changed my mind on the matter.”

“Ha!” she laughed, giving Balin’s arm a tight squeeze. “Excellent! That’s just what I set out to do!”

They’d danced together afterward, Elís slamming up against his chest more than once, both because she was unsteady on her feet and, he was sure, to reassure herself that their little bit of contraband was secure in his breast pocket. It was a comfort now, in the cool night air and damp grass, to remember the warmth of the mead hall, flushed with the satisfying sweat of cheerful exertion rather than damp with the old perspiration of a day’s long ride.

“So…” Atli said when the silence between them stretched longer than his liking - in Balin’s experience, that was usually a period of between twenty and thirty seconds. “You and Elís…?”  
Balin waited for him to finished his question, but apparently that _was_ the question.

“What?” he asked blankly.

“You were getting awfully cozy last night,” he replied, waggling his eyebrows up and down in a manner that was meant to be lascivious, but merely looked ridiculous. “Should I save my pennies and buy you something quality for the wedding feast?”

“Oh, come now,” Balin scoffed, certain that Atli had to be teasing. “She’s a bit too old for me, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not in front of her I wouldn’t,” Atli said and seemed slightly horrified at the thought. Elís was at least forty years older than the pair of them and though Balin and she had ever been friends, he never seriously thought of her as a courting partner. To be honest, he never thought of anyone as a courting partner. “She’s not ancient.”

“I never said that,” he replied evenly. “Only…”

He thought of Elísif, pale and stocky, an inch taller than him, maybe two. She was pretty enough with her dark eyes and darker hair, like onyx, but there was no spark there, no conflation. He thought that when a dwarf met someone they would take to courting there would be knocked arse over head by the sensation of this is the one. That was how it was in all the operas. That was how it had been for his parents.

“You’re old too,” Atli interjected, looking Balin up and down consideringly. “In a way.”

Balin spluttered incoherently for a minute before managing, “Me, old? You’re two years older than I am!”

“True, but I don’t act it,” his friend declared proudly. “And Elís doesn’t act her age either - nor do you, she acts like a dwarfling of sixty and you act like you’re eighty going on two hundred, it’s a perfect match. Add to that she’s awfully like your Ma. It’s said dwarves who go for dwarrowdams usually choose someone like their Mas.”

“She’s not just like my mother,” Balin protested, mildly horrified by the tone of the conversation. Atli, despite his penchant for tomfoolery, was just as much a friend of Elís’s as he was and his comments this night had paid her no compliments. “She’s...taller. Why are you asking, anyway?”

“No reason,” Atli shrugged, shifting again against the tree trunk, trying to get comfortable. “Only if my friends tie the knot ‘round their necks, I’d like to know so I can search out new companions.”

“Well, there’s no danger of that,” Balin reached over and patted his knee soothingly. “I’m fairly certain Elís is wedded to her craft.”

“And you?”

The question took him by surprise. What of him indeed?

“I’m too young,” Balin replied and turned away with gratitude when he saw another one of their fellows bringing them their supper. It was cold, but it was food and they ate it down gratefully, not sparing a word for talking as they changed shifts and tucked themselves into their bedrolls for the night.

It was different sleeping in the wilderness than it was sleeping in the Guardmen’s dormitory. Most of the same faces, even many of the same sleeping configurations, but the night carried sounds other than the drone of snoring dwarrows, sounds that conspired to keep Balin awake despite how tired he was from travel. His father was among those sleeping, probably closest to Thrór or Thráin. It occurred to Balin that this was the closest he’d been to his father at night since he moved out of his parents’ suite of rooms fifteen years ago.

It was odd, growing up. A warrior grown he was and yet now he lay ten feet from his father, like a dwarfling in his cot. Now the stars glittered above him like a mobile, twinkling and shifting overhead. He rolled on his back and stared up at them, memorizing the patterns, trying to name the constellations. If he managed that, perhaps he’d fall asleep.

Durin’s Crown was found easily enough, southwest from the Maker’s Hammer. Ónarr the Hunter’s Girdle, comprised of three bright stars, he could pick out, but he strained to make out the shape of the wolf’s pelt Ónarr held aloft. Eventually he gave up and rolled over on his stomach, pillowing his head on his arms. Maybe the stars looked different to the astrologers of the First Age.

Balin’s mental exertion did him little good. He was restless now, his mind whirling, but he could not settle on anything to think of to calm his mind. Rather than pass a sleepless night, tossing and turning, he decided to get up. If the fire hadn’t burned away to nothing, he might have time to get some reading done.

No sooner had Balin risen and started rooting around in his pack than a sharp crack, a momentary snapping of fingers made him whip his head up sharply. His father was not sleeping, but standing at the end of the encampment. Balin squinted into the darkness and saw that he was signing at him. _Sleep,_ he realized was the meaning of the gesture.

 _Can’t,_ he signed back, once, then twice before his father nodded. Fundin regarded his son carefully for a moment before raising his hand and beckoning him to come to him.

 _Careful_ , he signed. _Quiet._

Balin was inclined by his nature to obey his father, never moreso than now. He rose as quietly as he was able and picked his way cautiously around his sleeping comrades until he stood at his father - nay, his _captain’s_ side.

Fundin walked away from the camp and Balin supposed he was meant to follow, so he did, wincing at every squelch his boots made when they sank in the mucky ground. “Do you have the watch?” Balin whispered when they’d ventured far enough outside the ring of soldiers that he thought he speech would not rouse anyone.

Fundin shook his head. “Nah, I couldn’t sleep either. What’s your trouble, accommodations not to your liking?”

For a moment, Balin was worried that his father truly expected that he wanted special privileges and it was on the tip of his tongue to reply that of course the camp was as good as could be expected, but he made out the creases around his father’s eyes in the gloom and knew he was only teasing.

“I just can’t stop…” Balin shook his head and kicked a rock with a toe of his boot. “It sounds ridiculous, I just can’t get my thoughts to settle down so I can sleep.”

“Doesn’t sound ridiculous at all, I always have the same problem first few nights on the road - I’ll wager you’d never think I was a dwarf who couldn’t stop thinking, eh?” Fundin dodged a half-hearted bat at his arm from his son. “Ey now, that’s a hard offence, striking your superior.”

“I’m sure Ama would approve,” Balin pointed out. She would too, she always took umbrage when his father or his brother joked about their lack of intelligence. It was hardly fair, Balin thought, anyone would look a little dull next to her, but Fundin and Dwalin were not bookish dwarves by any stretch of the imagination. Nevertheless, his father chuckled quietly and nodded in acceptance of his son’s words. “What were you thinking about?”

“Same things I always think on when we go abroad,” Fundin replied, glancing back at the camp. “How the lads are faring, how far we’ve come, how much farther there is to go. Your mother. Your brother. You.” Balin looked up, surprised and his father shrugged. “Thought I’d be able to lump you in with the others, I figured since you’d be with me now I’d know where you were, how you were getting on. Should’ve known I’d only find to worry about out here.”

“I’m fine,” Balin said, perhaps too quickly because his father stared at him a moment and looked him up and down, just as Atli had done when he told him he was old. “Really. Damp socks and sleepless nights aside, there’s no need to worry about me.”

Fundin chuckled again and rested a hand on the back of Balin’s head briefly, ruffling his hair, “Turns out I haven’t much choice in that matter.” He wet his lips and seemed to wrestle with something before he continued, “I never...I didn’t go to war with my father. I was too young, I barely remember him.”

Balin knew that, though it wasn’t something that was spoken of very much in their family. His father was orphaned at a young age, left in the care of his brother and sister until he went to the guards’ quarters, much younger than Balin himself had been when he moved out. His grandfather Farin fell in battle and his grandmother Sigríd, a Healer meant to stay behind in the tents, rushed into the fray either to attempt to save him or to die with him was not clear. She fell beside her husband.

“You were seventeen?” Balin phrased it as a question, but it was a fact that he knew as surely as he knew his own Name. For his grandmother to sacrifice herself like that, having a child at home who was so young, she must have loved his grandfather very much. He wondered what it had been like for them when they met, if there was a conflation or not.

“Aye. Seventeen, if you can believe it.” He nearly couldn’t, his father was a marvel among dwarves, the tallest of their kind Balin knew and one of the strongest, grey bearded for as long as Balin could remember. It was almost impossible to imagine that he’d ever been a small child who needed looking after. “I don’t remember them much, but I do remember Gróin sitting me down to tell me they - well, he didn’t say they’d passed, he said they weren’t coming home. Trying to...soften the blow, I suppose. He was younger then than you are now, I can’t blame him for not knowing what to say. Had me on his knee and said, ‘Dísa will be home soon, but Amad and Adad won’t be coming with her.’”

Balin did not know what to say to that. He couldn’t imagine being so young and losing both his parents - he could not imagine being without his parents now. What would he do without his father’s firm, but gentle guidance when he sparred? What would he do if he didn’t have his mother to visit with in the evenings and discuss lore or court or whatever else popped into his head that he wanted her opinion on?

There was a battle looming at journey’s end. One he might not survive, though the matter of his own mortality seemed such a queer thing to contemplate that his mind shied away from it. There was no question in his mind that, come what may, his father would stand at the end of it. His father, a giant among his people, a legend in his own time. Fundin the Fearless. Balin did not know why he should desire to speak of this time long ago when he was not himself, not his father, but a child his son could never imagine existing. Still, if his father wanted to talk, he would listen, even if he did not understand.

“I didn’t know what he meant, of course, I asked if they’d be along later, I think...I still didn’t understand for a while after they didn’t come back. I thought they’d gone off because they weren’t fond of us anymore, my brother and sister and I. Or else they thought that they had no more responsibilities because Sigdís and Gróin were grown and they’d forgotten about me.” Fundin’s hand was again on Balin’s head, trailing fondly through coarse black locks. “Haven’t always known what to do with _you_ and that’s the truth of it. I like to think I’ve done right by you.”

It was difficult to make out his father’s expression. Something like...Balin would almost call it apprehension, but it couldn’t be. Fundin wasn’t afraid of anything.

“You have,” Balin said earnestly. It felt like giving comfort, but again, what need did his father have of comfort? He had trod this road before, many times. Was it so different to walk the path to war alongside his son? “Of course you have.”

“Your mother,” he went on as if he hadn’t heard a word his son had spoken, “told me to keep you safe. Bring you back, it’s what I aim to do. All I aim to do.”

That was not a usual warrior’s oath. _I will slay a hundred orcs!_ the old warriors bellowed in the mead hall. _I will slay a thousand!_ shouted the young ones.

 _I aim to bring you back,_ spoke Fundin, the bravest and best of them all. More than an oath and less than a promise.

Balin responded with a nervous half smile. “That’s funny,” he said, resting a hand lightly on his father’s forearm, looking up into his eyes. “She told me to do the same for you.”  
They did not exchange another word between themselves that night. Fundin slung an arm around Balin’s shoulder and led him back to his bedroll.

At journey’s end, he would understand rather better why his father sought him out in the dead of night, to recount his fears and and his past to him. When the dust settled and the dead accounted for and the living grieved, he would come to see why it was so important to Fundin to make himself known to his son. It is an easy thing, to be remembered. It is much more difficult to be known.

At last they ended where they began, in Erebor’s great hall, in the arms of their kin. Dwalin did not hang back this time, he ran to Balin first, then his father, embracing them both eagerly before he pulled away and peppered them with endless questions about the battle, questions Balin answered with a weary patience granted to one at the end of a long road. His father lifted his mother clear off her feet and she marked his homecoming as ever she had, with a long embrace and a lingering kiss.

Once she was set on her feet, she fairly attacked Balin, throwing her arms around his neck so tightly he could not draw breath enough to speak to his brother, and covering his face with kisses until he was laughing and squirming to get away from her. Before the battle he would have been embarrassed at a show of such exuberant affection from his mother in so public a place, but now he thought there was no finer feeling in the world than to be home, being loved by those he loved most.

“Well done,” she said, smoothing his cloak, wet and stained from the road, over his shoulders. “Very well done, indeed.”

“How can you say well done?” Dwalin asked, wrinkling his nose at the praise. “You haven’t even asked him how many heads he cleaved or how much blood he spilled.”

“I don’t need to,” she explained to her youngest with a wide smile, drawing her left arm through Balin’s right, leaving her other arm free to snake around her husband’s waist. “I don’t care how many orcs they’ve slain, five or five-hundred, doesn’t matter to me a bit. I set them each a task to perform when they set out and they did an admirable job.”

"I wouldn't want to disappoint you," Balin said with a smile as they made their way toward the celebratory feast.

Halldóra rose up on her toes to kiss her son on the cheek. "Ah, dearest," she replied. "You've never disappointed me once in your life - ah, and here's a sight for sore eyes, I'm sure." She pulled unwound her arm from her son's and stepped away as Elísif jogged over to him, bouncing on the balls of her feet.

"You've survived," she observed with great satisfaction as his parents walked past them, his mother tugging Dwalin by the arm to make him follow. He looked back at his brother and his friend curiously, but Halldóra seemed determined not to let him linger. "How about your gear?"

Balin smiled and withdrew the book from the inner breast pocket of his coat. "I didn't even let the damp get to it," he winked at her. "Guarded it with my life."

Elís took the book and hugged it to her chest, beaming broadly, then enveloped Balin in a one-armed hug, knocking their foreheads together. "I knew you would," she said when she pulled back. "I never doubted you for a second."

"I did!" Atli crowed somewhere above both their heads. With one hearty slap on the back apiece, he said, "Let me tell you how I saved this lad's life out in the field."

"Oh, that sounds a pleasant faery story, I'd love to hear it!" Balin laughed and together they joined the crowd of families and friends reunited and relieved back home under the Mountain. They talked all night, and drank and danced and when they were too tired to move talked again until dawn and the last of the revelers made their way to bed. The stories were long and short, about everything and nothing at all. Some tales were of battle, some of childhood and some about an incident from the month prior that they dismissed as unimportant at the time, but recounted with gales of laughter now. Most of their stories were not stories at all, but memories shared among them, taken off their mind's shelves and given new life in the half-lit hall.

This exchange was, Balin realized now, an assurance as much as a pleasure. So they knew that, come what may, there was another soul in the world who might one day think of their fallen friend, father, brother, king, comrade and say, _Aye, I remember him and I knew him well._


End file.
